The Stanton family is re-located from their familiar and comfortable surroundings in America to a small and unfamiliar town in England. What they don’t know is that the family actually has deep roots in the town several centuries deep. And the youngest son, Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) “who is just trying to fit in at school and figure out how to talk to his crush” is the unlikely hero who finds himself thrust into an epic battle between the champions of the light and the sinister soldiers of the dark.
Will finds that he is actually the last in the line of warriors called the Old Ones who are led by Merriman (Ian McShane) and Miss Greythorne (Frances Conroy.) Each take Will under their wing to guide him on his journey as The Seeker where he will need to use his special powers to seek signs hidden throughout time to right the balance between light and dark.
As Miss Greythorne explains to Will ” he is “part of something that has been waiting for you all your life. We, the Old Ones, we serve the Light. The Rider, he serves the Dark. The Light creates, the Dark destroys. THE SEEKER, Will. It is you who must restore the power of the Light.” His feeling of alienation mixed with deja-vu, she tells him, is part of the plan. “You are special, Will, a Stanton, returned to this place. The seventh son of a seventh son.”
Setting off on the journey of a lifetime ” Will uses his powers to travel through time, make objects fly and exhibit supernatural strength to fight the evil who is represented on earth by the mysterious Rider. As The Rider attempts to overcome the world with cold and darkness, Will battles with himself and all the dark forces that are being used against him to save the world. Although he questions himself and his abilities the Old Ones are there to reassure him that: “Even the smallest light can shine in the darkness.”
Adapting A Classic
“I was familiar with the Susan Cooper series of books, The Dark Is Rising for many, many years,” says Platt. “In fact, Susan and her former writing partner – the late great actor and writer Hume Cronyn – were very dear friends of mine. So, these are books I always followed with great interest in terms of their potential journey to film. And one day, about two years ago I had reason to call Susan just to wish her well, and see how she was doing.
“Out of the blue, I asked her, “Susan, whatever happened to the option that was running on The Dark Is Rising series, I know for many years there was talk in making it a film.” She said, “It’s funny, you should call me today because the option expires today.” And I thought, well that’s kismet, that is someone, and I always thought it was Hume Cronyn, sort of looking down from above and saying, “This is the moment. Make it happen.”
“So, I hang up the phone from Susan. I made a couple of phone calls. And literally within a week I had sold the movie rights to the book The Dark Is Rising to Walden. I feel like there”s a destiny in this whole process, not just for the main character of the movie, but in our journey to bringing these books to the screen as well.”
For Platt, there was nobody who could better update Susan Cooper”s “literary treasure,” than screenwriter John Hodge. “John Hodge is a writer whose work I’ve been familiar with for so many years. He”s written some great movies, particularly for the great filmmaker Danny Boyle. And John writes with humor but a darkness and an edge. And that seemed to be a perfect fit with THE SEEKER, which is a movie for audiences of all ages, so to speak, but has a lot of dark corners to it, and a deep sense of mystery and foreboding. And that”s present on all of John”s writings. The marriage of John to this material felt particularly apt.”
Certainly, The Seeker”s mission is crucial for the filmmakers. As in the novel upon which it is based, the big battle scenes against evil are the focus of the action. For Hodge, the challenge in adapting the story for the big screen lay in making a metaphysical tale a more cinematic experience. “The book is quite lyrical and fluid in the sense that it’s perhaps not written in the commercial way that many authors would write children’s books nowadays because a lot of them will have one eye on the film rights. So it’s not structured quite so”rigidly,” says Hodge. The changes, according to Hodge, were essential to bring the excitement of Susan Cooper”s work to the screen.
“I thought it was going to be tricky to adapt at first,” he adds, “because a lot of the book is sort of flights of fancy inside the boy”s head. So as with any adaptation, you”re looking for ways to dramatize what is more internal in the novel. This one called for some sort of re-thinking.”
“Essentially, this is the story of a 14-year-old boy, Will Stanton, who finds himself caught up in the eternal struggle between good and evil, which are called the Light and the Dark” says screenwriter John Hodge. “He discovers that he is not just a normal 14-year-old boy, but that he is in fact someone called The Seeker who has some special insight, some special powers and a specific task, which is to find these six little signs in which is hidden the power of the Light.
“In this point in history, with evil ascending, he has to find these six signs, restore the power of the Light and then defeat the Dark,” he continues, “What I liked most about it was the fact that it was a story of a boy, and a modern-day, real boy having kind of real family and growing-up type problems. And for me they were the heart of the book. And then on top of this there’s the fact that he has to save the world” Hodge chuckles.
“Scripts and novels have different demands. There’s always far more in any novel than you could possibly fit in a screenplay. So anything that seems confusing or that duplicates, then you just have to kind of get rid of,” says Hodge, who was a doctor before he came to screenwriting. “When you’re writing a script, you’re trying to make things as clear as possible at the start so everyone understands the relationships in the family and understands the process by which Will becomes sort of transformed from a normal boy into this being who’s going to save the world,” says Hodge.
“In the adaptation of any material from the written word to film, imagination is required to render as cinematic as one can elements that otherwise flow freely in the written word,” says producer Marc Platt. “We tried to be very true to the essence of Susan”s books, to always maintain the integrity of her books. But we also opened it up into a world that was cinematic and would be exciting for movie audiences in the year 2007.”
One adjustment from the book is that Will Stanton is American, not English, and has been re-located to England with his family. According to the director, this “fish out of water” scenario is essential to bring more drama to the story. “The book was an English family living in England,” says Cunningham, who himself has travelled to over 100 countries. “What I like about the conflict of an American family living in England is, from a filmmaking standpoint, that it gives you one more element to deal with, this cross-cultural clash. It seems that almost every fantasy movie, you have to be from England to have a fantasy story happen to you. I think this is going to bridge that gap. And then there is the fact that Will, as an American, is culturally alien to the setting. Why is this happening to him now” If someone is an outsider, it feels more appropriate that this is the sort of person to whom these strange things are happening.”
“What I like the most about Will is how at the start of the movie, he’s a little bit more insecure. I love how he changes throughout the movie. I’m really drawn into characters who are complicated and aren’t just one character throughout the whole movie. I find my character changes throughout the whole movie. He learns more about himself, learns more about what he has to do in his life.”
“John Hodge brought so much to this,” says director David Cunningham. “And trying to adapt a classic work like Susan Cooper’s and make sure that it’s accessible to today’s audience, was a big feat. I think he pulled it off well! To make a thriller that kids can really embrace and be a part of and at the same time try to capture the spirit of Susan Cooper’s work is a difficult balance. But he did it.”
Ultimately the filmmakers want audiences to enjoy themselves on this thrilling ride with The Seeker. Explains Platt, “I want them to have a good time and to be entertained and to go along the journey with Will Stanton as he seeks the signs that will ultimately restore the power of The Light. And in so doing, comes to find out a lot about himself. And to live up to the full potential not just as The Seeker as he becomes known, but as Will Stanton the character.
“And I think that any story that asks us to be, to learn how to be the best of ourselves, to live up to our potential, to empower ourselves from our everyday life, that is the story that is satisfying, that is appealing, and that has an emotional component that each of us can relate to. It’s also my great wish that if people and audiences find the film entertaining and exciting, it will provoke them to go and discover Susan Cooper’s great books once again.”
“You know, we have an amazing cast,” says Cunningham. “Christopher Eccleston, Ian McShane, Frances Conroy, James Cosmo, Jim Piddock… I’m very fortunate to have such a great cast, and they all bring a color and dimension to their characters that is hopefully a little unexpected and is intense at times, and it always has levity in it and fun. So I’m very lucky to have all of them.”
Finding the right actor for the pivotal role of the world”s coming-of-age saviour was no small task. “We discovered Alexander after a search far and wide. We pursued an aggressive search of every 13-, 14-, 15-year-old young actor across the world,” says Cunningham.
“What we were looking for was in fact a kid that was completely relatable, completely accessible, and would actually seem like the kid next door, who all of a sudden then finds himself this most ordinary kid in the most extraordinary of circumstances. And we were very lucky, when out of the blue, an actor that none of us had known before, young Alexander Ludwig appeared on the tape. And a number of us went, wait, who’s this kid” He was accessible. He was not mannered.
“He was very natural. And he had a certain pure joy about him, purity of spirit that, again, seemed to befit the character. So, we brought him in. He read and before we knew it, we had cast our Will Stanton.”
“What I love about Alexander is the rawness and the realness that he brings. He”s just there, and at the same time he allows himself to be molded and he listens. So that”s a great combination. He”s almost in every scene of the movie and every kind of condition, mud and water, rain and snow. You name it, we put him through it and, he”s been embracing it and loves it.”
For Ludwig, the role was a dream come true. “The second that I read the script, I knew that this part was for me,” says the young actor. “I absolutely knew it. Ever since I”ve been a little kid I”ve always wanted superpowers ” which is the coolest thing in the world. So I read the script and loved it and I really, really wanted this part. You have no idea. I”ve never wanted a part more than this one.”
Amelia Warner plays Maggie Burns, the attractive girl who goes to the same school as the Stanton brothers and who becomes close to Will and his family. “She kind of infiltrates the family through one of the brothers and tries to get very close to Will. She’s pretending she”s inhabiting that world and pretending to be a schoolgirl, and very sweet and lovely, when in fact she’s working for The Rider. She’s been sent to try and get the signs from Will,” says the actor. “And she’s using every trick in the book ” trying to make him fall in love with her, to get close to him ” to try and take the signs from him.”
Of her pivotal scene with Will, where the truth of her character is revealed, Warner is enthusiastic. “It’s good fun, but the water and stuff has been quite hard. I’ve lost my voice because of it, all the shouting.”
When the filmmakers cast Gregory Smith to play Max Stanton, it was totally serendipitous that the young actor known to television audiences for “Everwood” actually grew up in the same town as Alexander Ludwig, who plays Will. “Believe it or not, I grew up in a little town called West Vancouver, a small suburb of Vancouver, and Alexander is from the same place,” he says. “He lives about a mile from the house I grew up in. His mom and I went to the same elementary school. They shop at the grocery store where my little brother’s a bag boy. It”s a very small world.”
For Smith, the most significant aspect of working on the film was taking direction from David Cunningham. “It’s sort of like riding an amusement park ride — like Six Flags Magic Mountain with no safety belt. You’re always kind of holding on for dear life. You never know where the camera’s coming from or what’s happening next. There’s always five cameras going in every one direction. It sort of, it keeps you off balance, but it keeps everything natural and very organic, so you’re really just sort of reacting, flying by the seat of your pants.
“And his process is pretty amazing. He sort of sees everything in his head, on a level far above anybody else on the set and knows just how to assemble the right pieces and steal just the right moment and put it together and make it really, really interesting to look at.”
For the eccentric Miss Greythorne, the filmmakers found an excellent choice of casting Golden Globe nominated actress Frances Conroy. “Frances Conroy is just one of those delightfully quirky idiosyncratic actresses who always creates characters that are slightly loopy and yet slightly memorable,” says Platt. “And in casting Miss Greythorne, we were looking for an older woman who would be a little loopy. Someone who you wouldn’t expect to be a great warrior, and then, in fact, have the wisdom and the strength that this character possesses. And Frances fits that perfectly because on the outside, she does appear somewhat loopy and quirky, but she possesses an inner strength and a real fortitude that manifest itself in her portrayal of this character.”
Conroy”s Miss Greythorne protects and guides Will Stanton against the forces of evil. “We’ve been waiting for him for centuries,” says Conroy, “He is in fact the last of the old ones in the body of a child.”
Performing with Ludwig, Conroy was complimentary, “Alexander is an extremely gifted actor. He’s so totally immersed in the character of Will and he’s so open and light filled as Will is, that it’s quite beautiful to be around him and to be around his energy. It”s contagious and lovely. He’s wonderful.”
“David Cunningham is the loveliest man,” says Conroy. “He’s so calm and warm and you know that he’s watching very closely what everyone’s doing. And he has this quiet focus about him that’s all embracing and just very nurturing. You just feel that he”s someone who knows what he wants. Plus he likes to laugh, which is sweet.”
Conroy”s best moment was during the fight scene. “I have a fantastic turn where I pull a sword out of my walking stick and slice a bird in half. It’s fun and I have a lot of coat that billows as I do this turn, and that turn. The worse was the flood scene. I got pretty wet. I was so happy when our scene was over.”
For his part, Ian McShane, best known for his Golden Globe nominated role as Al Swearengen on HBO’s Deadwood, jokes that he took the role of Merriman so he could make a film his grandchildren could watch. “They can’t watch Deadwood, or something like that. This will be good, I thought.”
“I think the one thing I wanted to bring to this was reality,” he says. “It was written in Old English. I wanted to make it as natural as we could without altering it. They weren”t characters out of some restoration comic book. They weren”t shouting Shakespeare dialog. I just wanted to make it a little more real. They sound more natural even though they look wacko. For me,” he adds, “finding the look of the character came first, and then finding a reality through the words, because they speak in, not old English, but it was written in a sort of a more flourished style. So, finding a natural line through that without making it sound like you just walked off a stage in Stratford or something. You know, it mustn”t sound like that, but they do tend to be quite valuable characters.”
As one of the Old Ones, and especially as the guide for the young hero, McShane sees his role as one of prodding with a fine mix humor and authority. “We”re helping the kid, that”s the main thing. The battle between light and dark, which they”ve been fighting for years before this kid showed up. I just like that with the kid, they get a little exasperated with him. I have to say to him, “Deal with it. This is what you are. So it”s kind of a playing around with the kid thing. I really tried to inject a little humor into it. That wasn”t always in the script. The humor thing always helps.”
Ian also played off of the real-life mentor-mentoree chemistry with Alex. “I told him, when we go on the set, whatever is happening we’ll get on with it. It’s true. You just have to get on with it. You play it where you don’t talk down to him, and he doesn’t talk up to me. We play it like two people who just met, and that’s really what we do in the movie.”
He goes on to say: “Alexander (Ludwig) has really worked. It’s very rare that you get the kid in nearly every shot of the movie. It really is. He’s the one that’s got the message: in the story we have to guide him through the various processes. He’s the last of the Old Ones to be born. There’s me, Frances Conroy, James Cosmo and Jim Piddock. And they survive through the ages.”
Likewise Alex compliments Ian saying that he is “hilarious. He’s actually really cool. We’re on the same page. He’s a very generous actor, as is Chris (Eccleston.) They both give so much. It’s such an honor to work with such professional, talented actors.
“Merriman in the movie is pretty much my mentor. He guides me through. He tells me what I have to do pretty much throughout the whole movie until the point where at the end of the movie I’m asking him for help because I’m so used to getting guided by him. But he’s saying, at the very end, no, Will, you have to do this on your own now. He’s the guy who guides me through. He’s really tough on me at the start of the movie. And he’s very interesting in his role because he’s learning more about himself throughout the movie as well. You know, it’s another side to the story. Towards the end of the movie, he realizes, that even though he”s just a kid, he should be treated just the same. And he’s really, really great.”
Portraying the embodiment of evil in THE SEEKER is veteran British actor Christopher Eccleston who read the book and enjoyed it. “It’s close to me because it’s couched in Celtic mysticism and it’s a very intensely British book.” As for the script and the changes to The Rider”s character, Eccleston says, “When you see it, you’ll understand. There’s an opportunity with the Rider for humor and subversion and satire that I’ve not seen before in these kinds of films. Ninety nine percent of the dramas I’ve made have been for adults, both film and television, and this was a real opportunity to try something new.”
Eccleston enjoyed the camaraderie amongst the players, he says. “Ian I was aware of. Frances Conroy is a fantastic actress who I admire. And Jim Piddock, James Cosmo, and the American actors ” we’ve formed a tight little unit. There’s some great actors and I’ve made some great friends while we’ve been here shooting. And great to see them work, you know, a, a real variety of people who’ve come together and formed a kind of, a unit.”
Except for a few scenes, Eccleston performs mainly with Alexander Ludwig throughout the film. “He’s an amazing young man to carry a film like this,” says Eccleston, “I carried a film when I was 27 and couldn’t really speak or think for the two months afterwards, but he seems like it’s just water off a duck’s back. He doesn’t seem tainted by all the Hollywood that we all know so much about.”
Making cinema for a younger audience is a challenge, according to Eccleston. “I think a younger audience is much more exacting than adults actually” they’re much fiercer in their attachment once they’ve taken you to your heart, but they have better detectors than us.”
Production Design
Scottish production designer David Lee was brought on board to bring the vivid story to life. His first feature film as production designer, Lee is, according to Cunningham, “the eternal optimist, and his bright light shines through any challenge. He’s a fantastic guy and has built some fantastic sets. It’s not been easy pulling off this size of a show in a country whose infrastructure is still growing and adapting to today’s challenging ways of filmmaking.”
Marc Platt agrees. “David Lee has been, to my eye, one of the great art directors for many, many years, and I was anxious to give him an opportunity to be production designer,” syas the producer. “And David is from England, so he certainly knew the territory and the history that we were trying to recreate, and yet he was able to bring to all of his designs something unique, something slightly off kilter, something different that rendered the world unique and specific to our story.”
Production designer David Lee, whose previous work as art director includes BATMAN BEGINS, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, STAR WARS: THE REVENGE OF THE SITH and STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES, was given the daunting task of creating the look and feel of a larger-than-life fantasy epic that pivots on a physical and metaphysical battle between light and dark.
As a production designer, David Lee”s job is to break down the script into scenes, sets and environments which can either be built ” as in sets ” or locations that already exist or a combination of both. Months before the production on THE SEEKER began, Lee sat down with a pencil and a blank piece of paper and started drawing possibilities for film. “[Then] I sit with the director during the prep time and we map out the environment,” says Lee, “and the different journeys he’s going to need to film.” Together, the designer and director fit all of the script”s “pieces” into a coherent sequence of scenes and places, ready to be dressed, filled with actors and filmed.
One key element of the film was the design of Huntercombe Manor. Huntercombe Manor”s exterior was built from the ground up, but so real that visitors to the set thought the building had always been there. “We’re in Romania and so obviously you’re not going to find an existing location with that look, so we had to build this from scratch,” says Lee. “It’s quite an opportunity – a good challenge to sort of build something indigenously English in a Romanian landscape.
The visual take on Huntercombe Manor was drawn from many different reference points, Donney Court and other English stately homes ” with one difference: the crucial window. “We decided that we would be best served with a double-height bay window,” says Lee, “which will eventually be the room which is flooded and frozen and burnt and various other things.”
Despite the complexity of Huntercombe Manor, the time taken to build such an impressive set was quick in film terms. “It was about seven weeks,” says Lee, “The big timber pylons went in about the twentieth of January and in a seven week build, there was quite a lot to do in a short amount of time.”
“I think David Cunningham has been exceptional in this in terms of creating a huge enthusiasm. There’s a real sense of camaraderie, which has been brilliant to work with,” says Lee. David Cunningham is, “very visceral,” says Lee. “He has a kinetic movement about the way he sees. There”re always layers and levels about what David wants to see, so you have the sense, as the viewer, of finding through layers and levels and light and dark. Quite an amazing visionary, I think.”
Costumes
Vinilla Burnham was brought on board to realize the wardrobe of the characters in THE SEEKER. She was able to draw on her work from THE FIFTH ELEMENT and LOST IN SPACE to create a visual language for each of the main characters. “With The Rider I spoke to David about it right at the very beginning, before we even knew that Chris was going to play the part, the look, and even the horse and what the horse was wearing. It’s a very, very atmospheric costume.
“We decided to go down the leather route because it was very important that it didn’t look like a superhero. After being “broken down”, which involved The Rider”s costume being soaked in water, the suit was then painted and given the feeling of rust and age.”
For Conroy”s Miss Greythorne costume, a special jacket was made. “Miss Greythorne was for me a fabulous opportunity for glamour because,” says Burnham. “There’s not very many women in the film. And although Maggie is very attractive and young and funky, Greythorne being an English eccentric, is something I know something about. It was an opportunity to come up with ideas that were eccentric but not for the sake of it. And Frances Conroy can carry off a lot – she looks extremely elegant.”
“With the church outfit, which ends up being in battle, it was important that there was movement about it,” says the designer. “So at the back of this costume there’s a lot of fullness. When she’s fighting you get really nice movement in it. So it’s slim and elegant, and yet when she starts moving, it starts moving too. It just looks glamorous.”
“They’re such beautiful costumes. It’s so interesting what she did and chose,” says Conroy. “I went to London and tried on some wonderful things and made copies of them, like the coat that I wear when we’re battling the snakes, just the way it flows is so beautiful and they evoke a kind of a time. The gown that I wear at the Christmas party, it’s this beautiful gown that’s made with a technique called Devore. Clothes are evocative immediately as soon as you see them and wear them. It’s just wonderful.”
The Snakes, Ravens, Vikings and The Flooding
“I come out of grittier subject matters, documentaries and independent films, and one of the things I like to think that I’m bringing to this is the realism,” says director David Cunningham “It’s a fantasy and realism movie with an emphasis on realism. So, instead of heavy CGI (computer generated imagery), we’re doing a lot of things for real. We’re about to spend a week and a half in the Great Hall set doing some pretty cool things, people flying up in the air, getting bashed against walls, using horses – all kinds of stuff.”
Making fantasy real was the task of all who crewed THE SEEKER. Viking fights, floods, crows, snakes and stunts were just a few of the elements required. As the director put it, “When you blow up a car for real wild stuff happens. The blast goes this way and maybe a camera gets smashed and you get a cool shot and someone has to dive out of the way, and it’s like, ‘Whoa! I just captured a great moment.’ So I’m leaning in on my strengths of being able to try and use the real thing.”
According to Conroy, Cunningham”s desire for veracity means the film, although it is a fantasy, is also very human. “I think that David is keeping the special effects down to the most human level he can, which I think is nice because then it’s not virtual, it’s real. There’s flesh and blood behind it all and I think that makes a difference. I think even the sets make a difference that way. They won’t be totally computer-generated sets. And both for the people existing within the world, and the people watching it, I think that there will be a visceral reaction to the reality of it, a three dimensional quality to it.”
This philosophy applied to the snake scene where Will is pursued by a giant albino cobra. 1000 live snakes, some thirteen feet long, were brought in from the Czech Republic ” enough to fill half of a massive church. Specialist snake handler Jules Sylvester of Reptile Rentals ” and veteran of some 350 films – was brought on board to wrangle the snakes for the scene.
The reptilian stars of the show are the exotic white python and the de-venomized rattlesnake whom Sylvester says is “a beautiful snake” who “is so friendly, it’s almost embarrassing. He doesn’t do what rattlesnakes do. Rattlesnakes are usually trying to kill you. This one just sort of hangs out and says, “Hey, how’s it going”” So he’s very relaxed. Very Hollywood.”
To contain the snakes, Cunningham put his team to work, creating a kind of “snake space” to hold them in place. “We”ve designed a special floor in the church that will hopefully keep all the snakes in one place,” Cunningham laughs, “We’ll find out if that’s true. They’re not venomous, but they’re still snakes so that will be interesting. Then we have a real albino cobra that’s absolutely beautiful.”
The film”s stars were able to keep their cool around their slithery co-stars. Alexander effused that “it was really cool seeing a thousand snakes in this big pile and right before David says “action”, there’s a snake crawling through your leg. So you have to grab it and put it back into the pile.”
McShane was equally as enthusiastic about working with the snakes. “There were about twelve hundred of them,” says McShane. “I grew fond of the snakes. I’ve never worked with them before. They were nice, you know” I was especially fond of this big python. He was this thirty footer. But they are very heavy. And I had these two that just kept looking at me…”
And Conroy was less enthusiastic but ” as usual rose to the task. “I had a snake around my neck,” says Conroy. “First they put a big rubber one around my neck because it was a really, real looking snake. And then they put the real 30-foot python around my neck. So the snakes were interesting.”
In THE SEEKER – ravens inhabit the world of darkness, at least in a mythical sense. Several scenes involve the ominous portent of flocks of them hovering about, waiting or even attacking people.
In keeping with the production”s super-realism effects ethos, some of these scenes are achieved by means of mechanical rather than digital effects. Take for instance a sequence that takes place in a mall, where young Will is interrogated by what seem to be security guards but which later turn out to be denizens of this raven-universe.
The security guards, explains Make-up Effects Supervisor Gary Tunnicliffe, are composed of ravens. That is, they at first appear to Will in human form, dressed in their security-guard outfits. But then, when they begin to reveal their mysterious true nature and chase after him down a hallway, they actually exude flying birds.
How to create this effect, which is easy enough to describe in a screenplay but more difficult to visualize” Tunnicliffe and his team saw it as a cinematic design problem that needed to be solved. “We created a human-sized puppet called Arthur,” Says Tunnicliffe, “and we put him on a dolly so he could move down the hall while transforming. Coming out of his chest at designated moments are raven-puppets attached by a rod. On one end is the raven and on the other is Arthur”s chest with the rod coming through the back of it for control.
“The shaft can be manipulated so the wings will flutter as the birds move. Later, a real human with security garb and a ravenish beak will be inserted in the shot running down the hallway, and through editing, the effect of a “Raven Man “will be achieved.
Working with the “Vikings” was a little more palatable for most of the cast and crew. Cunningham actually brought in a team of Viking re-enactors to bring realism to the scene. According to stunt coordinator Troy Brown, the Viking battle was action-packed with carefully plotted stunts and battle sequences. “We did a lot of horse work and we did some fire burns, horses falling, a lot of fights and stuff with axes and swords.”
The scene involving the flooding of the manor was a massive feat to pull off and required a combination of physical and digital effects. To accomplish this, Cunningham explains, “we built the entire set for the manor house in a giant tank which we filled with water. Working in a tank with all these actors we thought would fun and challenging.
Cunningham continues “the actual flooding was achieved by these giant tip-tanks that we fill with water. And as it hits the bottom it, it picks up speed and the water is released down, down — it’s like a chute — at a decisive moment and thousands of gallons of water smash the glass creating a wall of water that advances toward the town. The entire manor is completely overwhelmed by this giant wall of water. ”
To shoot the wall of water we have a cable cam set up. It’s a very large rig — there are two pick points on either side of the lake and then we have an arm that carries the camera across the lake and that’s like the rook’s point of view. So we come flying right at this manor and then, with the help of the computer, we transform into a wall of water. Now the transformation is by computer, but the actual wall of water once the transformation is complete between the rooks and the water, is real with the giant tip tanks.”
Filming In Romania
“What we are pulling off is a Herculean effort in a short amount of time, in a country that is in the middle of its own growing pains and we are very proud of the size of the movie we are making for not a lot of money. We are re-interpreting the fantasy genre and we are really proud of what we are pulling off,” says Cunningham.
In fact, THE SEEKER was the largest production ever on Romanian soil which has hosted other monumental productions such as the Academy Award nominated Cold Mountain. All of this is amazing for a state that was recently considered Soviet and for years under Communist rule.
The vast stages of Media Pro, Romania”s largest studio located 12 miles northwest of Bucharest, offers actual lakes, water tanks, huge soundtages, skilled carpenters and nearby rustic landscape.
As Cunningham points out, “There’s nothing like the real deal. There’s a lot more freedom in a real set versus a CGI one. That’s why we did come to Romania, so we could go big and hopefully we’ll create a ride that feels like it’s really happening.”
Eccelston was very impressed with the work done for the film. “Stunning, just stunning. And I hope the sets will be preserved, maybe to be used again. The work that the Romanian crew and set designer have done on this film has been amazing. It’s been a massive effort and it”s not difficult to suspend your disbelief in settings like this.”
To Conroy, Romania was a wonderful experience. “It’s a wonderful group of people. In Romania it has its own interesting things to deal with,” says Conroy. “I go around feeding dogs everywhere. I bring eight cans of food with me everyday. I’m taking one home. They’re very nice and they just need food. It’s been an experience. It’s a beautiful movie. We’re far away from home all of us and I’ve met some lovely people. I studied Romanian so I understand a tiny bit of what’s going on.”
Production notes provided by 20th Century Fox.
The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
Starring: Ian McShane, Frances Conroy, Christopher Eccleston, Alexander Ludwig, Jonathan Jackson, Amelia Warner, Gregory Smith, Emma Lockhart, Wendy Crewson
Directed by: David Cunningham
Screenplay by: John Hodge
Release Date: October 5, 2007
MPAA Rating: PG for fantasy action and some scary images.
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $8,794,452 (28.0%)
Foreign: $22,589,932 (72.0%)
Total: $31,384,384 (Worldwide)